Last August, shortly after the A’s filed a lawsuit in Alameda County Superior Court against the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), A’s president Dave Kaval sent out a series of tweets. The lawsuit alleged that DTSC had failed to implement the state’s Hazardous Waste Law against Schnitzer Steel, a steel manufacturing and scrap metal recycling company with a facility in West Oakland. Kaval’s tweets expressed concern about the impact of Schnitzer’s actions on the soil and water within the community, which he said could lead to fires. He deemed it unacceptable.

“We want to be part of the solution,” Kaval tweeted. “Environmental stewardship is core to our commitment to Oakland. We are doing this with our groundbreaking environmental justice legislation to improve air quality, reduce car trips by 20% & address sea level rise.”

The city of Oakland released its draft environmental impact report for the A’s Howard Terminal project last Friday, a behemoth of a document that is upwards of a few thousand pages long. As we enter a 45-day public comment period, which will address potential weaknesses in the document before a city council vote, it’s worth taking a hard look at the transportation section.

When the A’s hopes of building a stadium at Oakland’s Laney College fell through in 2017, the team quickly shifted gears and began planning a new ballpark at Howard Terminal.

In the time they’ve spent pitching the waterfront stadium to the city and fans, the team has promoted a rosy outlook on the project’s viability. And even though this ambitious undertaking — which also includes housing, office and retail space — presents an array of complications, the A’s seemed confident heading into 2020 that they would be able to move into their new home for the 2023 season.

A Bay Area swim coach used to explain to her swimmers the most important principle of their sport by using this timely reminder:

“Ticky-tocky goes the clocky.”

That should be the A’s mantra for their efforts to build a new ballpark.

Last week the A’s appeared to clear a big hurdle in their quest to build a future home at Howard Terminal. A judge dismissed a lawsuit that would have bogged down their stadium timeline.

Hurdle skimmed? Sort of. Except that the group of entities filing the suit, which includes Schnitzer Steel, immediately appealed the ruling. Even if the A’s eventually prevail, the appeal could be another setback to their construction schedule.

The three largest ship-to-shore container cranes on the U.S. West Coast now reside at the Oakland International Container Terminal (OICT).

SSA Marine, the operator of OICT, purchased these cranes from the world’s leading crane manufacturer, ZPMC. The cranes can work containers 24 wide while accommodating up to 14 high on deck. The new cranes will compliment four existing cranes which were recently raised, providing OICT a full arsenal of cranes capable of serving the largest container ships transiting the Pacific Ocean. These three new cranes will replace three older generation cranes as OICT will have ten cranes servicing its five-berth facility.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

When the Warriors lost an appeal last week that would have allowed them to skirt repayment of their $45 million debt to the Oakland Coliseum Authority, Alameda County and Oakland taxpayers breathed a sigh of relief. But little did they know just this past October Alameda County set itself up for the same risk when it sold its half of the Oakland Coliseum property to the A’s for $85 million without any condition that the team stay in Oakland or provide any community benefit to the East Oakland community.

Now, the city of Oakland is also contemplating the sale of its half of the Coliseum property to the A’s, without applying conditions to protect taxpayers and demanding the A’s stay in East Oakland.

The Athletics, the last professional sports team in Oakland, has found itself playing more defense—and little to no offense—in its grand plan to build a new stadium.

When the team first announced plans to build a new baseball park and relocate from the Oakland Coliseum—the stadium it has called home since it moved to California in 1968—in the mid-2000s, the A’s owners have been on a whirlwind run around California, looking for the perfect spot for their grandest project yet.

The team finally settled on the Howard Terminal in Jack London Square, some 5.5 miles northwest of their current home, where they are planning to put up a ballpark at an estimated cost of between $600 and $700 million. 

From Calgary to Los Angeles, everyone knows that sports arenas are a bad deal for cities. But the problem isn’t just the use of public subsidies for private profit: the whole multibillion-dollar sports venue industry is built on the backs of poorly treated, underpaid workers.

The North American sports market, worth $71 billion, is limping forward in spite of COVID-19 being transmitted among rosters and fans. Teams and leagues have made token gestures to assuage fears, from keeping players in isolated, lonely bubbles, to high-tech, low-impact, and extremely invasive forms of hygiene theater. However, there’s one spectator sports mainstay that can’t return to normal: the idea of fans enjoying games in stadiums and arenas.

The East Bay Economic Development Alliance (East Bay EDA) plans to honor the Port of Oakland at its 2020 Innovation Awards event tomorrow, Oct. 15, for its significant contributions as a long-standing generator of jobs and economic vitality in the region.

The Legacy Award will be presented at the 8th annual East Bay Innovation Awards from 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. during a virtual celebration.

California is fortunate to be the home to the most productive regions in the world for manufacturing and goods movement.

According to 2018 statistics, California manufacturers lead the nation in manufacturing with more than 1.3 million workers, over 30,000 companies and exports totaling more than $154.44 billion traveling through our ports.